finding fate

1/27/24 - Written for 2024 NYCMidnight Short Story! I’m not particularly proud of this work since the prompt was RomCom/Shoplifting/Motivational Speaker — and I notoriously dislike RomComs. That being said, I am very proud of how this was an exercise in writing different genres, and I learned a lot from this experience! This story did make it past Round 1 :D

I was fifteen when I first sold fate, and it sickened me.

Fate, with all its mystery and dark unknowns, flashes before greedy eyes like a flipped coin, distorting the line between young and old, rich and poor, desperate and hopeful. What’s more magnetic than knowing your death?

I was twenty when the Emperor’s youngest son paid me a visit.

-!!!-

When I first arrived at that outskirts village, it was after a night of running, smoke still rising from my singed clothes. Besides flashes of flames and an impossible heat licking at my soles, I don’t recall much of my past. Madam Jin had treated my wounds from that night, and I simply never left.

I had been under Madam Jin’s tutelage for three years when she fell ill. No poultices worked, and the nodes under her neck swelled horrendously. It seemed the entire village came to her death bed—a courtesy to the woman who typically sat at theirs. 

Her tongue had ballooned into a hot, red appendage that seemed to me completely unrecognizable. How could this part of you, the pink beast that flashed behind your teeth, be rendered into this docile, alien object? It shattered me. It bothered me to no end that I could tell all she had to say, but she had no strength to speak it herself. I, who knew Madam Jin best, would need to be the one to say it.

“Madam,” I said before her, and I drew upon the memory of her calm, poised face. “I know this is your last day. I sense it. But let me speak for you here. I know you want to tell your patients that they will still be cared for. I know that you want to tell the villagers that they will be in capable hands, to not fear death nor life as it comes to them.”

“We will not end our stories here on the outskirts because we live on in every heart, including mine.”

Madam Jin gave a firm nod, eyes shining, and the villagers erupted into tears.

The story grew its own life, and overnight, I was suddenly an alchemist capable of turning fated ends into new beginnings; I could divine hope from silence. With a few choice words, I could convince the village that their forgotten end at the outskirts could mean something more. 

From then on, the villagers would continue to call me by increasingly unwieldy names. Vendor-of-last-words, prophet-of-a-thousand-lifetimes, augur-of-auspicious-beginnings-and-bitter-ends. Under their breath, most referred to me as an oracle of death.

-!!!-

In every far-fetched tale that reached our village, Prince Boyang was an enigma.

From court news, he played the naughty youngest, pulling elaborate pranks on the royal family. In bitter times, Prince Boyang was a greedy puppet for his father, tricking his good natured citizens into impoverishment. I would never hear the same tale twice; Prince Boyang bounced between mischievous child and cunning strategist at the turn of a phrase, riding the swelling tide of the country’s emotions.

I had expected the pampered Son of the Son of Heaven. I had expected opulence: trailing yellow robes, lacquered headwear crusted with pearls, an entourage of servants carrying sacred treasures.

Instead, the Prince Boyang that walked into the apothecary was, for lack of a better word…dusty.

Parched lips. Streaks of dirt across a weary, sunburnt face. His armor was crusted with mud, not pearls, and he came alone. If it wasn’t for the letter I had received the week prior, signed with the imperial stamp, I would have yelled at this impolite stranger for tracking dirt into the shop.

“Welcome,” I said, turning from where I was taking inventory. I tacked on a hasty, “Your Highness” with a bow. 

“I take it you’re the one they call Oracle of Death,” he said. His voice was resonant, smooth. Confident despite the exhaustion. “Did you receive my letter?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” I bowed again for good measure.

“One bow is more than enough,” he said, dry. There was a moment of hesitation. I could feel it in the word he began to mouth, the careful intake of breath while he weighed the sentence on his scales. Then: “Your Highness’ is also not necessary.”

I could feel my eyebrows desperately trying to shoot up, but I imagined grabbing them in my hands and yanking them down into submission. Not necessary?

“What should I call you then?”

He smiled tightly. “Just Boyang is fine. If that’s okay with you, Oracle.”

“Ming,” I said. It felt extra uncomfortable, hearing a prince call me oracle. “If that’s alright with you too, then you can just call me Ming.”

“Alright. Then, will you tell me my fate, Ming?”

“Follow me.” I said, leading him to the back of the apothecary. I swept aside the curtain dividing the shop from my office. I held it open for him as he ducked through, and for a moment, I was overwhelmed by the smell of him. Smoke and the sharp odor of sweat, but underneath it, something sweet like white pine. It brought me back to those flashes of memory from before: fire and forest waging war in the dark night. I shook my head to clear it.

My office was simple: a low table with two cushions on the floor. My window faced a crop of forest, and our only light was the soft wash of sunset through the trees. In retrospect, there was a dreamlike quality to this memory. The room was honeyed with orange glow, jars of dried chrysanthemum lining the walls, and him. Hesitant, mysterious, dusty Boyang.

He sat cross-legged across from me. I wondered, wildly, if it was considered blasphemous to let the Son of Heaven’s divine blood to sit on the floor. (Quickly followed by the thought: Fuck, should I have told him to stand? Which, by then, would have been equally blasphemous.)

“So,” I began, interlacing my fingers. “What would you like to know?”

“My fate…”He trailed off, and again, that pause in his lips. “The war, as you know, has been long and treacherous, but it’s over. With this new peace, my father has decided he has no need for soldiers any more.” 

Once more, the careful pause. 

“It…seems I’m to be wed in the new year.  I have lived my life for its stories, but on the topic of love…I suppose there’s a role in that story I’m not quite willing to play.”

My first thought: Oh. There’s been a war?

My second: Oh. Fuck.

“Love,” I blurted out before I could help it. “You came here for love?”

He nodded. “I need to know if this next role my father has planned for me is real. This is likely my last story in the kingdom, and I want it to be something true, for once. Can you tell me, Ming, if this marriage is made out of something true?”

His eyes were so earnest. I saw plainly in his handsome face what he wanted to hear. Yes, Boyang, the ancestors have told me that your marriage will be spun of true love. You will love your wife fully, for more than just the role in the Empire’s story. Your obedience to your father, to your country, to Heaven will all be worth it so you can have this one pure thing to yourself. You can do it, you can do it, you can do it.

I couldn’t do it.

War and death were one thing, things I was familiar with, but they were also easy to plumb through their contents for stories of valor or shining courage. Motivation, when it came to purpose, felt necessary. I knew that, whatever lie I told Boyang about his marriage, he would be trapped in that story. To me, that seemed a different breed of cruel.

And, some traitorous part of me whispered, doesn’t he get a say on who he is in this story?

“Come back tomorrow,” I said, averting my eyes. My heart pounded. “The stars are not right for this today. Come tomorrow.”

“Alright.” His voice was soft, but his eyes were piercing. I felt transparent before him. “I will see you tomorrow then, Ming.”

It wasn’t until that night, right on the cusp of dreams, where I realized he was the first person to call me by just my name since Madam Jin.

-!!!-

So. I’m a bit of a coward.

One day turned into two, turned into a week, and I found myself delaying the second meeting with the Prince for an entire moon cycle. Everyday, he stepped into the apothecary, expectant. And everyday I pretended to have some other chore, or that I was ill, or one time, I pretended I was asleep at the counter for hours.

Listen, I am, at my core, a woman of self-preservation. It was my only defense against Boyang’s seemingly endless patience.

I heard secondhand how the Prince was integrating himself into the village. While he waited, he seemed to be doing every chore available—helping old grannies with the harvest, or making paper toys to entertain the few children. My patients, still managing to be insufferable as they suffered ailments, would tell these tales with quirked eyebrows and knowing smiles. I ignored them, same as I ignored Boyang.

He always left a stem of jasmine on his way out.

But when a merchant arrived, bringing with him both wares from the capital as well as stories…

“Did you know,” he told villagers, tucking talismans into their hands, “these once belonged to the Emperor’s youngest boy. What a tragedy, but also, what a legend!”

“Did you know—” Here, he slipped his customer a wooden toy. “—that these are blessed by Heaven? It was the seventh son’s favorite, and it guaranteed his survival during the war.”

A leather bound journal. “Did you know—”

Three porcelain bowls. “Did you—”

A ring. “Did—”

Look. I know how hypocritical this sounds. I know that the merchant and I deal in the same trade. But gods, his lies; they served no story but one that was tragic, incomplete, and wrong. There was nothing there that felt real, that gave life, and it pissed me off.

When the merchant’s head was turned, I swiped the ring.

I rushed away, feeling the metal burn in my fist. My thoughts swirled between marriage, the seventh prince, tragedy, and I wondered what his stories had transformed into. ”Hey! You!” the merchant’s hawkish voice called out behind me. “Thief!”

Shit. I picked up the pace—but the steps behind me were gaining speed—I steeled myself—ready to turn with righteous anger—my foot, catching on a stray fabric—

A hand reached out to break my fall.

I found myself face to face with the youngest slice of Heaven. It was my first time in a month since I had properly taken a look at him, and his time in the village had clearly been kind. The weariness was replaced with a healthy glow, and, without dust streaking his face, I could map out the strong strokes of his features. 

Heat poured down my back. He, the blacksmith. I, the liquid and molten metal. It was a toss up between anger and shame (or was the heat just from his hands?) but the merchant had just caught up to us, watching us expectantly. I straightened out from Boyang’s hold, balled up every scrap of my dignity. and chucked my pride to the back of my mind.

Looking up, I bat my eyes.

“Oh, my sweet husband!” I went through every permutation of death that I could experience in that moment as I clutched at his arm. The damned prince had the audacity to raise an eyebrow, mouthing back a bemused “husband’?

I grit my teeth into a grin and continued, “Dear, I was rushing over to show you what I found.”

“Ah. Yes. My wife,” he said. Again: a pause. His features contorted into complicated, constipated expressions, and I knew he was once again weighing words on a scale.

Oh spirits, I realized in horror. He’s a shit actor.

“Yes, yes,” I continued for him. The merchant had stopped in front of us, ready to accuse. I unfurled my hand. “I wanted to show you this.”

“Oh,” he said, quiet as a sigh. He took it gingerly from my palm. It confirmed my suspicions that the merchant had stolen this from the capital…and the implication that the palace had done away with Boyang’s things.

“That’s the young prince’s prized treasure,” the merchant cut in, now sensing there was trade in the air. “They say it granted him immortality on the battlefield, that it was gifted to him by the late Empress.”

“That’s true,” Boyang said softly. “Though I’m not sure much about immortality.”

“Well.” The merchant looked ruffled. “How would you know the stories of the capi—”

“I’ll take it.” I cut in, staring at Boyang’s face, which had turned wistful. His eyes, when they met mine again, were lost in something precious and unreachable. It made something in my heart swell—seeing something in those dark eyes that thought so far in the past. With the past still in smoke behind me, that wistfulness was something I could never have. I wanted to give him a new freedom.

We paid the merchant in kind, and we made our way throughout the rest of the village.

In that dreamlike setting sun, for the first time in a long time, something tugged on my heart to speak for something greater than myself. I wanted to say something honest, and I wanted it to come from me.

“I’m not sure what tales you left behind,” I started, drawing on the speeches I would make to lost villagers. “And I don’t know what fate you left in the capital. I cannot speak to what fate you even want to hear. But there’s a new start here for you; this place is special for that. You can do so much more than what the Empire has in store for you, and you are more than just…fodder for those stories.” I grab his wrist, palm up, and drop the ring in his hand. I thought about the new health in his face, the jasmine on my counter, white pine and fire. I remembered stories of lost tragedy and war and myths that lived far away. “I’ve seen it myself.”

Boyang looked down at the ring and curled his fingers around it. I cringed at how much I had said, the rhythms the same as every speech I had ever given, but it felt more personal, different, coming from within me.

Wordlessly, he slipped the ring on my finger. 

“I think I’d like that,” he said, smiling. White pine and dust and jasmine. “Starting something new.”

Looking at him, I believed there were untold stories out there for me too. I tiptoed, closing the distance, where a tentative, new fate had begun to be bottled between us.